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After a longish period, with not much happening at all, the last week has been a particularly good time for reviews of my 'nostalgedy...

Tuesday, 29 November 2011

Moped Moping

I suppose it was only a matter of
time before my juvenile reluctance to get up in the morning collided with my
continued employment as a paper boy.

For the first year or two, I had
been a relatively keen employee. Not particularly
punctual, I'll admit, but usually amongst those present. However, in the latter part of my final year
at school, it was no longer necessary to attend class all day, every day, as we
were deemed to be determinedly revising.
Without the incentive of having to be up anyway for school, the daily
tussle between dozing or delivering papers became an ever more unequal
contest. Therefore, after a number of
weeks in which my morning presence had been, at best, sporadic, it should have
been no surprise that when I turned up at Mr. Kidger's shop one evening, armed
with my latest excuse for my non-appearance, he sombrely relieved me of my
paper bag, handed me the meagre amount that I had earned that week and said
that he thought we should call it a day. It was like the newsagent's version of being
cashiered. I felt as if I had had my
stripes ripped off and my epaulettes sliced away by a sabre. I could hardly
protest, as he had been more than patient with me, and so I trudged back home
to reveal that, once again, paid employment and I had parted company.

For the next few months, I was
reliant on my pocket money (about 50p per week, I think) and whatever I could
drum up by collecting empty bottles to return for their deposit value, until
the local off-licence got wise to the fact that we never actually bought
anything from there, and discouraged the practice.

That I should move from this
state of impecunity to one of fabulous wealth (by my standards anyway) seemed
unlikely, but it happened.

I have mentioned before that I
worked for a few weeks at Bovril/Marmite during the intervening period between
my leaving secondary school and starting at Burton Technical College. I cannot remember how much money per week I
was earning then, but I do know it was far more than I had ever had in my
life. Even with my dissolute habits, it
was impossible to fritter it all away, and so I started to think about how I
could usefully spend all of this cash. I
decided that I would really need some form of transport to get me to and from
South Broadway Street and Burton Tech. and started to look longingly in the
window of Jacksons' Motorcycles in Borough Road. My dad, however, diverted me to the adverts
in the local paper. One short visit to a
rather nice lady in Stapenhill later, I became the owner of a Mobylette moped
that she had, apparently, never really taken to.

Complete with 'L' plates,
provisional licence and a tank of two-stroke mixture, I was ready to roll. This may have been an accident waiting to
happen, given that I was not all that competent even on a pedal cycle. However, any misgivings my parents might have
had about a motorised me, were quickly dispelled when it became apparent that I
was never going to be challenging the local chapter of the Hells Angels on this
contraption. In fact, I would have been
hard put to out-run a group of schoolchildren on a Cycling Proficiency Test.

Obviously never designed for
tremendous speed, even though it had a speedometer that optimistically finished
at 80mph, it was clearly less nippy than it should really have been. As I had no mechanical aptitude, and neither
did my father, there was really nothing much I could do about it other than to
fill it occasionally with petrol and hope that it would miraculously sort
itself out. Nevertheless, it was pretty
embarrassing to be overtaken by people on push-bikes.

I persevered with the moped
during my first year at college but, eventually, consigned it to a temporary retirement
in our back yard. I couldn't afford the
petrol, but, more importantly, I couldn't stand the embarrassment of parking it
by the sleek, shiny motor scooters of my contemporaries.

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About Me

Philip is a retired university lecturer in Human Resource Management. He has just turned 60, which is marginally better than not turning 60 in his opinion, but not much. If you can forgive him both of those facts, then you might just enjoy his writing.

He lives on the edge of the Derbyshire Peak District, because that is as far as they will let him in. He was born and brought up, in Burton upon Trent, the home of the UK brewing industry, and spent much of his early years attempting to support that industry single-handedly. Much of his writing over the past few years, for the Derby Telegraph, Burton Mail's "times gone by" magazine and Mature Times has featured his recollections of growing up (allegedly) in the 1950s and 1960s. He's christened his combination of nostalgia and comedy 'nostalgedy', he did consider 'comalgia' but he thought it sounded too much like an unfortunate medical condition.

"Steady Past Your Granny's" was Philip's first, self-published, collection of stories, available in Kindle and Paperback formats. The bumper sequel, "Crutches for Ducks" was published on Kindle on 1st November, 2011. Philip's first foray into full-length humorous fiction, "Jambalaya", followed on 30th August, 2012 and the third collection of 'nostalgedy' stories, "A Kick at the Pantry Door" burst onto the scene on 1st July, 2013 and has been collecting 5 star reviews ever since.